ISN'T IT GREAT when spring arrives, and you can get out in the garden and renew acquaintance with your favourite plants? In April and May, we make plans, envisioning how everything will look in full bloom. This is the time to finish buying seeds, and to make decisions about planting shrubs and perennials, or maybe purchasing new garden equipment. We've packed this issue with super gardening and landscaping tips, including pointers on planting wildflower meadows and building windbreaks and gazebos. For our website-exclusive feature on railings, click here. Although our livelihoods are not at stake, as they are for neighbouring farmers preparing to plant crops, we acreage owners embark on a seasonal gamble, too. We can't imagine what environmental events, including wacky weather or plagues of insects, will affect our yards and gardens. Sometimes there are disappointments. At our place one spring, a late frost wrecked the saskatoons; one summer flea beetles devoured all our cucumbers. This year, we'll plant our 10th garden on the acreage, and we do some things differently than we did in the beginning. Early on, just for fun, we experimented with such things as collard greens, lavender and peanuts. Of course, these didn't amount to much, given the harsh realities of our climate. Early germination and fruiting are prerequisites now, for anything we plant. We know that, in order to pick ripe tomatoes from our Prairie garden, we need varieties that will set fruit in 58 days. Happily, there is usually some species in our yard that will find just the right conditions to yield a bonanza. Then we have to do something with it, besides sharing it with the birds. One year we planted too much basil. Way too much. We had several harvest blitzes with the kids, all of us pinching off the tender leaves before the plants bloomed, so the aromatic oils would be at their peak. It was tedious work, but the fragrance was intoxicating. Basil could be used by perfumeries. We weighed the bagfuls we gathered, and were amazed when they totalled 65 pounds. Then I had marathon sessions with the food processor, preparing pesto and freezing it. We gave away pints and pints of pesto, and used a great deal of it, and I think I still have some in the darker corners of the freezer. Another summer brought an abundance of gooseberries. A friend told me she'd used gooseberries in a recipe for brandied fruit. This seemed like a good idea, but I discovered I needed numerous other ingredients, too, including strawberries not then in season, plus a large quantity of brandy. The conserve prepared with my "free" fruit ended up costing about $75. Picture me early one August morning, scrutinizing the shelves in the liquor store, trying to figure out how many bottles I would need for my recipe. A clerk approached offering assistance and I blurted out that I needed brandy, a lot of brandy. Unperturbed, he replied, "Madam, the largest bottle is always the best value." It was pointless to explain I wasn't going to drink it, just preserve my gooseberries in it and use the tipsy fruit as a dessert topping. That would sound silly. The truth often does.